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Talk:The Muppet Newsflash
fan blogs, round 3 Following the discussion below and the subsequent observations made at Talk:Disney Xtreme Digital, I think we need to explicitly state via policy that links to fan blogs can't be used as a source of information unless the writer cites sources. For example, interviews with Henson performers are valid, but news claimed as having come from "sources" unnamed are not valid. Without getting into it again (the reasons for this particular blog having not been trusted in the past are documented in discussions on this wiki), there's no way to determine if the information is coming from an official source, or some version of a Secret Squirrel, or just speculation being passed on as fact. Thoughts, please. —Scott (talk) 06:25, 19 March 2008 (UTC) :Yeah, I agree that we need named sources. Unfortunately, the same rule should apply to Secret Squirrels that we know and trust. -- Danny (talk) 19:25, 19 March 2008 (UTC) links I've become concerned with the use of links to The Muppet Newsflash on the wiki. Using , we had over 100 links a week ago that I went through and thinned out. First of all, the site is an unoffical blog run by a fan who doesn't cite any sources. The information usually turns out to be reliable, but in most cases, more prominent news outlets can be cited instead. In those cases where the blog is the only source, we should be limiting the amount of links to one. There's really no need for a list of 5 or 6 links all going to the same blog at the bottom of a page. Certainly, once a project in development has gone on sale or aired, the news items can be removed as their use there is only to back up what's coming: there's no sense in keeping a blog link that says "this thing is coming up soon" when people can go to Best Buy and pick up a copy or tune in and watch. Lastly, I'm particularly disturbed about the blog because Greg has been banned from Muppet Wiki for plagiarism on a number of accounts. To top it off, he doesn't have any return links back to Muppet Wiki on the site proper, or even when he gets information that originates from here. —Scott (talk) 05:15, 12 September 2007 (UTC) :I tend to agree with you. The fact that Greg doesn't return links is annoying, but not as much of an issue as the other factors. But for something like Return to Labyrinth, when the blog is being cited for merely pasting info from the publisher's website, it's not necessary. I think I'd feel the same if there were too many links to Muppet Central forum posts or to similar fan media sites. Ideally, if and when the blog does link to official announcements or other sources, I'd rather use those, and I'd feel the same way about any other fan website, when a more direct source can be found. Then there's something like The Skrumps, where there's a bunch of links, solely to list the dates when videos went up. Is there no other source or way to confirm them? I'm not necessarily knocking the blog, it can be useful in keeping track of what's going on, but I don't think it's an ideal source by any means, unless the info is clearly sourced through other means (such as interviews) and the Muppet Newsflash is the only source for it. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 05:36, 12 September 2007 (UTC) ::Yeah, really this would go for any such similar site. It just so happens that this one has been the worst offender. —Scott (talk) 06:00, 12 September 2007 (UTC)